The Graduate Student Council (GSC) certified its election results at its Tuesday meeting and passed a bill to designate the Sexual Health Resource Center (SHPRC) as a Joint Service Project of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU), with the GSC contributing 10% of the funding for the historically undergraduate-funded Center.
The GSC also voted to approve the Nominations Commission’s selected appointees for the Board on Judicial Affairs and the Community Board on Public Safety, as well as form a new committee for healthcare oversight.
Bills passed
The GSC unanimously passed a bill that would designate the Sexual Health Resource Center (SHPRC) as a Joint Service Project of the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU). Under this bill, the financial manager of the ASSU will serve as the “principal oversight authority” over SHPRC, according to the bill. Additionally, while the bill notes that SHPRC has “historically only been funded by the undergraduate student body,” the proposed breakdown for cost for 2023-24 would be only 90% undergraduate funded, with the remaining 10% sourcing from graduate students’ fees.
In a separate bill that night, the GSC voted unanimously to approve Hannah Jeoung ’24, Kristen Jackson (third-year Ph.D. student in education) and Amira Dehmani ’24 for the Board on Judicial Affairs and the Community Board on Public Safety, respectively. All three students were nominated by the Nominations Commission (NomCom), which selects appointees for university committees who are then confirmed by the Undergraduate Senate (UGS) and the GSC.
The GSC voted to certify the 2023 ASSU Spring General Elections Results, but chose to suspend its voting on bylaws amendments to add specifications to the co-chair election procedure and closed session procedures. The decision to wait another week to vote on these measures came after a discussion about how much previous notice is needed by the council members before voting.
Fourth-year chemistry Ph.D. student Lawrence Berg said that he didn’t think members of the GSC were “given previous notice on this.”
After discussing previous approaches to notice policy, the GSC decided that a link to content to be voted on is needed at least 24 hours before the meeting. However, at that point, fourth-year Ph.D. student in electrical engineering Kavya Sreedhar pointed out that the meeting was running 30 minutes behind schedule. “The fact that we’re over on the agenda says that we need more discussion on [these bills,]” Sreedhar said. The GSC decided to table the conversation until the next meeting.
Healthcare and affordability
Other matters heard by the GSC included an in-progress letter written by fourth-year Ph.D. student in electrical engineering Jason Anderson to Stanford’s administration about graduate student taxes. According to Anderson, graduate students are paying an extra $2,000 of taxes. “Right now, Ph.D. students have their Cardinal Care subsidized. When people go to a tax accountant, it will tax that subsidy. It should not be taxed,” Anderson said.
Anderson said he won’t share the draft yet, but he hopes the letter will help the administration educate students about the issue. “It’ll help the affordability crisis we’re in right now,” he said.
The GSC passed a joint resolution to create the Healthcare Oversight Committee (HOC), which will aim to author surveys, make recommendations on the Cardinal Care plan design and maintain strong relationships with the UGS and the GSC. The bill calls for the “university [to] delegate greater governance to the students and oversight responsibility in the administration of their healthcare.”
The GSC also voted to confirm Jas Espinosa as the ASSU Financial Manager and CEO of Stanford Student Enterprises for another year and approved funding requested by the Sing Plus Plus group for their concert.